This invention relates to magnetic transducing head mounts of the type permitting the head to move laterally of the general length direction of a recorded track for the purpose of following the track more accurately.
The art prior to the making of the present invention has included so-called bimorph piezoelectric or magnetically operated bending or pivoting leaf members, anchored at one end, and extending as a cantilever beam with the head assembly mounted at the free end of the beam. In the helical-scan magnetic tape transport art, one or more of these leaf-type mounts may be used, mounted usually to extend radially on a rotating drum, to cause the head to traverse or scan a magnetic tape curved around the periphery of the drum in a cylindrical shape the generatrices of which are parallel to the axis of the drum.
In such arrangements, centrifugal forces always tend to resist the desired displacement of the leaf tip and head out of the median plane thereof normal to the drum axis.
With the small and low-mass head structures of the prior art, this effect of centrifugal force was negligible. In the environment of the present invention, however, it is desired to mount a comparatively massive head stack structure containing from two to ten or more individual transducing components. For such use, the bimorph leaves of the prior art are too fragile, and even for magnetically driven leaves, the centrifugal force effect is so great that, unless it is rendered ineffective, undue amounts of power are required to move the heads, and precise control of the motion of the heads is rendered difficult or impossible to achieve.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a mount for positioning a magnetic transducing head on a rotating drum, wherein the action of centrifugal force is rendered entirely ineffective to aid or oppose the positioning motion of the head.